French director Blandine Lenoir's emboldened ambitions for cinema

By Jake Wilson

9 May 2018 — 11:09am

"I want to change the world," the French writer-director Blandine Lenoir says of her new film Aurore. It's a big statement to make about a movie that could be viewed as a modest comedy, but the themes of Aurore, while likely to strike a chord with many, aren't the kind most often put on screen.

At the age of 50, the title character (Agnes Jaoui) has a multitude of problems to deal with, including divorce, job loss, menopause, age discrimination and the unsettling knowledge that she's soon to become a grandmother.

This is only Lenoir's second feature, but as she points out, speaking through an interpreter, she's no beginner when it comes to cinema. A few years younger than her heroine, she started out acting in her teens, as a protegee of the famously provocative – some would say notorious – French director Gaspar Noe. In Noe's 1990s films Carne and I Stand Alone, she played a mute girl who becomes the victim of the incestuous desires of her father (Philippe Nahon), a brutish butcher.

Noe's brand of provocation is a far cry from anything found in Aurore, and Lenoir says that while she planned to become a filmmaker from early on, she didn't look to him in particular for inspiration. "What interests me most is the direction of actors," she says, "so I was absolutely struck by films where acting is given the first and foremost part."

As examples of what she admires, she mentions Maurice Pialat's 1983 film A Nos Amours – which gave a breakout role to another teenage actor, Sandrine Bonnaire – and all the work of the great US independent actor-director John Cassavetes.

Where Aurore is concerned, she says, the inspiration came directly from the life around her. "Basically this kind of subject-matter is not seen in cinema. And it was, I felt, a real lack as a cinema-goer. And around me there were a lot of women around their 50s who were beautiful, who were funny, to whom interesting things were happening, and they were not at all represented in cinema."

In a way, I suggest, this cuts against a view often taken by outsiders – that France is a country where older women are valued, and where female stars can maintain their status for decade after decade, in contrast to the premium Hollywood puts on youth.

If this is true, Lenoir says, it's only to a certain extent. "I think you can get this impression because we have a few actresses who actually are working a lot – like Juliette Binoche, Isabelle Huppert, Karin Viard, all these women who are in their 50s. But it's a handful … all the others, equally talented, get no roles offered."

Agnes Jaoui is a fiftysomething woman with a host of problems in Blandine Lenoir's comedy film Aurore.Credit:Palace Films

A case in point is Jaoui, who is most recognisable for her appearances in films that she herself wrote and directed, such as The Taste of Others from 2000. In this case, however, Jaoui's involvement was exclusively in front of the camera, with no script input. "She really was an actress," Lenoir says.

Even if the theme of menopause in particular is not a common one in cinema, Lenoir says she had no difficulties in getting funding. "I was lucky enough to get producers who came along with me. It was actually easier because the film was a comedy."

The main challenges she faced were technical ones, of the kind that arise in the normal course of filmmaking. In writing the script, she had a lot of characters to juggle – including Aurore, her two daughters (Lou-Roy-Lecollinet and Sarah Suco), her ex-husband (Philippe Rebbot), and the other men in her life – and had to work to maintain the narrative thread. "I was afraid of having a story that would look like sketches."

During editing, she made extensive cuts to the film, which now runs for a tight 90 minutes. "Comedy demands rhythm," she says. "So you had to be careful to maintain the energy."

In keeping with the comic approach, Aurore's spirit is an optimistic one, and Lenoir can see reasons for optimism, in French cinema and elsewhere. "I think things are changing. Slowly, but they are."